wtf: this is why the Internet is full of unreadable junk

Have you heard about Demand Media? (I thought I’d mentioned it before, but a search through past posts turned up nothing. I suppose it’s merely the fact that I’m constantly fuming in my head about Demand and its ilk that it seems like I must have ranted it them before.)

Demand Media is a content mill. It pays writers, filmmakers, and editors subminimum wages to churn out bland, “evergreen” how-to articles packed with banal “advice”… but also packed with SEO-happy keywords that generate, in aggregate, enormous profits for Demand. Because online advertisers don’t care if you click on a link that ranks high on search engines, load that page, and instantly bounce away because what’s on the page is useless: a pageview is a pageview, as far as advertisers are concered. This material, in turn, overwhelms the Net with boring, unreadable content and, of course, clutters up search-engine results with material you’re not going to want to read.
It’s not just me who frakkin’ hates Demand Media for all its sins against the Net and against good journalism. Jason Fry at Reinventing the Newsroom:

Your average Demand Media writer makes $15 an article. To make a semi-decent wage, that writer has to write an article in half an hour. Copy editors get paid $3.50 an article. To make a decent wage, they have about seven minutes per copy-edit. Unless you’re writing a very straightforward tutorial on a relatively simple process (an aspect of content farms that doesn’t bother me), it is not possible to write an article of any substance in half an hour. Nor is it possible to copy-edit such an article effectively in seven minutes.

Do you want to read an article that someone slapped together in half an hour? One that was edited by someone paid less than what you’d pay for a cup of fancy coffee? Would you trust a how-to that had been assembled with such little thought?

Remember: This writer thinks it’s a good thing that he can pop out an “article” in 20 minutes.

Now, I don’t even believe in an actual soul, or in karma, but as metaphors, they work: How does any writer with any self-respect participate in this charade? If there’s nothing you won’t do to earn a buck, doesn’t that make you a whore? And aren’t you the worst kind of whore: one who sells oneself cheap?

Demand Media’s own site is proud to announce that it is seeking “experienced, passionate, creative professionals… to lend their talent.” No kidding about the “lend.” Demand is not seeking newcomers who might be willing to work almost for free in return for exposure. Demand wants “experienced, passionate, creative professionals,” to whom it will pay $15 per article.

I saw a supposedly tragic story on CNN the other day about illegal migrant grape pickers in the American Southwest who worked for $15 per hour, work that American citizens turned down. It was considered even more tragic that taxes were taken out of their wages by their employer. But at least that meant that the illegal workers were only getting half the Social Security taxes withheld (the employer pays the other half). As freelancers, Demand’s writers — who are both their own employees and their own employers — can expect to have to pay 15 percent of that $15, plus income taxes.

Where is the sad CNN story about how writers are being treated?

Back to Fry:

Put these two things [cheap writing and cheap editing] together and you compound the mess. You get articles that read like first drafts — haphazardly organized, superficial messes. You get things like this, and this, and this — all Demand content selected as Editor’s Picks for USA Today’s Travel Tips section. These are lousy articles, and USA Today editors should ask hard questions about what being associated with them is doing to their brand. But I’m not saying the writers of those pieces are lousy writers, because it’s not a fair test. Criticizing those writers for creating subpar content in such a situation would be like criticizing auto workers for creating a crummy car when the assembly line’s moving at 40 miles per hour. The poor quality of the writing isn’t the fault of the writers, but a predictable outcome of the business model.

Okay, so: Demand sucks. It may be okay for hacks who have no compunction about farting out useless “content” in 20 minutes, but it isn’t any good for the rest of us: not for readers, not for publishers who value their brands, and certainly not for conscientious writers who have anything unique to say (which can’t be SEO’ed to death), who wish to develop a voice (which Demand is not interested in), who expect to earn a decent living from honest work (not from work that must be gamed to be even moderately well paid), or who want to write anything that requires real research.

Tony Silber at Folio, in a post entitled “Demand Media Can Go to Hell,” rages:

I hope no magazine ever partners with Demand Media. In fact, I hope Demand Media and any site like it goes out of business. They demean and abuse professional content creators, leveraging them to generate revenue from Google ads.

Demand Media Extends Content Model To Other Publishers, Hearst And Gannett First To Sign Up

Demand Media on Thursday debuted a new service for publishers to pad their online offerings with the work of independent freelancers. Two of the first properties to employ Content Channels, so-called, include Hearst Corp.’s SFGate.com and Chron.com.

You better believe that Hearst and Gannett — and Demand Media — are making out like bandits on this deal: the Demand writers don’t earn additional revenue when their material appears on highly trafficked sites like SFGate.com. All the earnings — and all the savings that Gannett and Hearst don’t have to spend on actual journalism — is going right into the pockets of these big corporations.

The next time someone bitches about how anyone can post anything they like online, or about stupid blogs about people’s cats, or the rantings of fanboys about comic books, don’t take it. Point them at Demand Media, and at the corporate publishers who buy Demand’s content, and tell them that’s who is to blame. Because no one, mostly, is reading most of those unreadable and pointless blogs and rants. But everyone is reading Gannett and Hearst sites.

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I know, this topic always makes me spit nails.
What I can’t belive is that journalism.com allows groups like Demand Media to post job ads on their site. People looking for real work don’t need this shit.
There also this “service” online called Highbeam Research that offers articles to anyone willing to pay for them….but get this, all the articles they’re offering to sell have been pirated from other publications. I should know, they pirated some of my work. But hey, the site gives you this deal:

“For a limited time, a select number of articles on HighBeam can be viewed in their entirety for free!”

Pfft.

Mo

Wow, I wondered where the smarmy, shallow tone in those sorts of articles came from. …And agree about the scary reach and influence they can have.

And yet there’s a little voice in the back of my brain saying I could probably take twice the time to write better articles for them, and I would be earning more than I do now at my much more respectable job… and a lot more than many of my former classmates who like me learned that the main jobs awaiting English students seem to involve pouring coffee for minimum wage.

*Don’t be evil, Mo* …gah, er, durr….Okay. *Hangs head* *Pouts*

Joe

Here’s the thing – the kind of people who write for these sites wouldn’t be able to make money writing at all if sites like this didn’t exist. You’re making the mistake of thinking that what they are doing is journalism, or at least aspires to call itself journalism. It’s not. It’s ad copy.

“Doesn’t that make you a whore?” Kind of, but again, if your writing isn’t good enough to make money otherwise, and you know it, why not be a cheap whore? It is, frankly, easy money.

If you want to make a decent living as a writer, 99% of the time you’re a deluded idiot. This has always been true; now it is merely possible to make money as a side gig. And please, don’t fucking blame the cheapo content hacks for the fact that ginormous corporations what to dishonestly act like it is journalism. If you’re lucky this drivel will end up subsidizing your precious “real” writing, if not…well no one will be reading it anyway, in which case you’d still not make any money (unless, like YOU you – that is, actual MaryAnn, not figurative “you” – you manage to somehow eke it out independently).

My point is – this isn’t competition for what you do, it’s another animal entirely.

MaryAnn

Here’s the thing – the kind of people who write for these sites wouldn’t be able to make money writing at all if sites like this didn’t exist. You’re making the mistake of thinking that what they are doing is journalism, or at least aspires to call itself journalism. It’s not. It’s ad copy.

I don’t think it’s journalism. But the people who are in a position to be making real journalism are treating it as such.

And all of these people — those who create this crap and those who buy it — are responsible for making it hard for real writers to make a living writing. Yes, it has always been tough to make a living writing fiction or poetry. But it didn’t use to be anywhere near as tough to make a living writing nonfiction. It’s much harder today thanks to Demand Media and its like.

http://rantocracy.blogspot.com/ MC

Other sites to add to this discussion… Helium and Suite 101… which in some ways are worse because of how bad the pay supposedly is. I mean, pennies for articles accumulated over time.

And someone told me about one of these sites which immediately screamed pyramid scheme… I can’t remember what it was called now, but it was definite multilevel marketing put on top of a supposedly freelance writing site.

It is horrible out there.

Funwithheadlines

Wasn’t familiar with Demand until now, but the comments here remind me of The Grapes of Wrath where the landowners kept lowering the wages to the Depression-era workers, knowing no matter how low they went there would be somebody who would take the job.

That abusive employer-employee relationship where employers take advantage of their power is why unions were formed in the first place.

http://www.newbspeak.com Newbs

Remember: This writer thinks it’s a good thing that he can pop out an “article” in 20 minutes.

I’m totally on board with your sentiments, MaryAnn, with but a single caveat… does it really take you longer than 20 minutes to come up with an article like this one? This is a fine post, well-written with a distinct message and point of view, like most of your stuff. But I am extremely skeptical that it takes you hours and hours of work to churn them out. Perhaps one or two require that sort of effort… but I bet most of them are done in less than an hour. And there’s nothing wrong with that at all — it’s not the timeframe, it’s the quality of the workmanship.

That being said, I reiterate: the internet is far too cluttered with junk search result pages and how-to bullshit, not to even mention the sites that just regurgitate content from other places. I just don’t think the speed at which an article is written has as much to do with it as you’ve indicated here.

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/bio.php?ID=262 Tyler Foster

Continuing on the thread that @Newbs is on, I haven’t seen any of these “Demand” articles, but if you write a tutorial on something you already are very experienced in, I don’t see why it would take hours either.

Muzz

No offense but I venture people who say that have never written anything.

Amazing this lot don’t call themselves Supply-Side Media really.
At least they’re a (small) step above the scammers you see in the paper. They set you an essay task upon application (something topical like ‘making money with twitter’, which no one has written definitively on yet but many are trying to wrangle their way into) then use it to stuff cheap marketing “textbooks” on ebay. Apparently they reject the applications after getting them too.

MaryAnn

does it really take you longer than 20 minutes to come up with an article like this one?

I did not labor over this post for hours and hours, but it certainly took more than 20 minutes.

it’s not the timeframe, it’s the quality of the workmanship.

Agreed. But the quality of the workmanship *is* what’s at issue.

if you write a tutorial on something you already are very experienced in, I don’t see why it would take hours either.

But you cannot make a career of that. Polymaths who can write are extremely rare. So unless you’re very experienced in hundreds of areas and can write quickly and concisely on all of those topics without doing any research, you cannot make anything like a living writing for Demand Media.

This post, however long it took me, is an expression of my opinion, which, presumably, I can be trusted to know without any research. And still, seeking out supporting links, finding the right quotes, never mind the actual composing of the post, took more than 20 minutes. The material writers are supplying to Demand Media is not opinion-based but solid, realistic advice (or it’s supposed to be, anyway) on all sorts of things. But if you look at some of the material, you can see how shallow it is. (Demand runs eHow.com. Would you take any advice on how to do anything from eHow?)

The “writing” that comes out of Demand is not meant to be readable or even useful. It’s meant simply to boost pageviews via SEO trickery. It’s cluttering up the Net with shit the only purpose of which is to make Demand a fortune. And it’s working.

Shadowen

it’s not the timeframe, it’s the quality of the workmanship

Someone who’s really, really skilled at their chosen field can do fast or good or cheap, pick two. Demand have chosen fast and cheap. QED. :P

Rose

I have to say, I have written crap for a company like this. I was waiting for a real job to come along and no where seemed to be hiring, so I thought I would lend out my fingers. Out of the many articles I wrote, there are a few I am pleased with – but yes, I wrote a lot of dross too.

http://toniokruger.blogspot.com Tonio Kruger

I saw a supposedly tragic story on CNN the other day about illegal migrant grape pickers in the American Southwest who worked for $15 per hour, work that American citizens turned down. It was considered even more tragic that taxes were taken out of their wages by their employer. But at least that meant that the illegal workers were only getting half the Social Security taxes withheld (the employer pays the other half). As freelancers, Demand’s writers — who are both their own employees and their own employers — can expect to have to pay 15 percent of that $15, plus income taxes.

Where is the sad CNN story about how writers are being treated?

Normally you pick your words a lot more carefully than this so I’ll skip the obligatory PC “oh no you didn’t” response and just note that if the illegal grape pickers had that great a bargain, one can’t help but wonder why Demand’s writers aren’t changing places with them? Fear of a skills test? Or could it be that sitting inside a nice air-conditioned room and getting paid a pittance for writing glorified typing exercises beats going out into the hot August sun and doing backbreaking labor for a pittance and a half?

Here’s the thing: the worst thing about being a professional writer is that it doesn’t often pay that well. Demand’s policies don’t improve that and those who go along with Demand’s policies for the sake of a byline and some quick dough don’t help matters.

On those points, I agree with you.

But writing isn’t the only job in America that sucks. And all too often one gets the impression from most professional writers–save for a few blessed exceptions like John Scalzi and Stephen King–that writing is the only job in America that sucks. That other jobs don’t have their bad points as well and that the only reason more Americans don’t sympathize with writers is that they’re too rich and wealthy to know what it’s like to feel undervalued for one’s labor. If only that were true.

One misses the day when writers occasionally acknowledged the existence of other people in their work. Yes, being an underpaid journalist stinks but so does being an underpaid waitress, an underpaid factory worker or an underpaid schoolteacher. And even if such jobs earned a decent salary, the fact still remains that many jobs are far more physically demanding than writing. Plus, few professional writers have to worry about getting deported if their employers aren’t happy with their work. Fired, perhaps, but not deported.

That said, thanks for what–apart from the part I already mentioned–was a great article.

MaryAnn

Plus, few professional writers have to worry about getting deported if their employers aren’t happy with their work.

True. Is that the be-all and end-all of life? Just do whatever you have to do to not have to worry about being deported?

If an unskilled job like grape-picking is shitty at $15 per hour, isn’t it worse when a company expects highly experienced, highly educated, very smart people to work for that same wage, even if it is not manual labor and not out in the hot sun?

Or are we going to equate the work of creative people with the work of people who have to sneak across borders to find shit work that no one else wants to do? Is that it? Is writing the 21st-century equivalent of migrant labor?

If it is, tell me now. Because I will stop banging my head against a wall now and go work in Wal-mart, which would, at this point, probably pay better. Or maybe I’ll go pick grapes.

I’m not suggesting that writing is the only job in America that sucks. I am suggesting that there used to be a difference between relatively unskilled manual labor and highly skilled intellectual work. That difference is eroding.

Here’s the thing: the worst thing about being a professional writer is that it doesn’t often pay that well.

Well that’s a pretty bad thing when you’re worried about paying the rent.

And if you think that intellectual work isn’t exhausting, too, you’re wrong.

One misses the day when writers occasionally acknowledged the existence of other people in their work.

Oh, come on: really? Did I have to actually come out and say that? Isn’t it a given? Or are we not allowed to complain about the world going to hell as long as there’s someone worse off than us? Or are we only not allowed to complain after we rattle off all the jobs that are worse?

For the record: I am not sitting inside an air-conditioned room. I am sitting in an un-air-conditioned hot-as-fucking-hell NYC apartment in the outermost reaches of the city because I cannot afford to pay the electric bill for air conditioning, in a modest apartment that I don’t know how I’m going to pay the rent on in a month or two.

And I still won’t work for Demand Media. Maybe that makes me a fool. But it’s not because I’m afraid of a “skills test.”

Or I could go work for Demand Media. I could rev my brain at high speed in the wrong direction to shit out three completely fucking useless how-to articles in an hour, every hour, for 40 hours a week, and make a nice living. But I’d be too burnt out for anything else after that.

the fact still remains that many jobs are far more physically demanding than writing.

So that’s what it’s all about? Physically demanding work is more valuable than mentally demanding work?

I think this is what’s got me so depressed lately: I’ve started to acknowledge that yes, what I do is not valued by our society enough to allow me to make a living at it, nowhere near. A hundred thousand people a month visit this site — that’s uniques, not total visitors; total visitors is a lot more than that — and that number might as well be zero.

But the asshole who is proud to be writing articles in 20 minutes for Demand Media, he’s doing okay.

amanohyo

A hundred thousand people a month visit this site…and that number might as well be zero.

From the perspective of actually making a living in New York, I’m sure that’s true, but remember, a small subset of the population are geeks, a small subset of that group are feminists, and another larger subset of geeks enjoys movies enough to regularly read reviews. And of the already small intersection containing feminist geeks who love movies enough to read reviews, an even smaller subset has the reading comprehension skills to see the obvious difference in quality between your writing and the online reviews of Joe and Jane blogger, many of whom are aping the generic “objective” style found in most large newspapers.

The qualities that define your reviews and set them apart are your feminist perspective, emotional and intellectual honesty, love of British television, and as a natural result of your honesty, your atheism. Depressing as it is, these are not the ingredients of a broadly successful movie review site, and they won’t be for at least a couple decades. It sucks that you can’t do what you love and make ends meet, but I’m sure to many of the regular readers here, a group of people that often posts entire paragraphs in a time when a single complete sentence is too much to ask of most commenters, one hundred thousand seems pretty impressive, if not downright cheering.

No doubt you think about this every day (thus the occasional donation link), but it’s a shame that there isn’t some way to ask those 100,000 people to each give you one penny a month to help out with the rent… This site is certainly worth a penny a month to me (maybe even a quarter =)

What you independent critics need is an infomercial… “just pennies a month will help these critics buy the food, water, and shelter they need to survive. And every month you’ll receive a blog from your critic showing you the positive impact you’re having on their lives.” I’m only being halfway sarcastic.

amanohyo

*whispers* Just out of curiosity, do you get any money when people click on the ads, but don’t actually buy anything? I try to do it at least twice a day, but I’m never sure if it’s actually doing any good.

MaryAnn

one hundred thousand seems pretty impressive, if not downright cheering.

I hope it didn’t sound like I don’t appreciate my readers, because I certainly do. That’s not what I meant. It would be one thing to not be able to make a living from a site that no one was reading — who would expect that? But I’m not sure I can convey how deeply frustrating, exhausting, and discouraging it is to know that I can have this large audience, a significant percentage of which are regular visitors and involved in the community, and still: zilch.

It’s also deeply frustrating and discouraging to know that I could be busting my ass for a company like Demand and maybe scraping by *if* I pour my all into writing stuff that is deliberately designed to be crap, all to help make them rich — Demand is filing for an IPO and hopes to raise $125 millon. But I obviously am not able to harness that talent for myself.

And then, just as obviously, I’m also not supposed to complain because writing has never paid well and I should just suck it up. So that adds another layer of frustration and discouragement: Our culture’s attitude is that if I were realistic, I wouldn’t expect to be able to make a living as a writer.

I feel like, I’ve invested so much time and effort and energy and money into this, that it would be foolish to give up now because maybe there’s a possibility that that investment will pay off someday, and maybe someday soon. So that’s *another* layer of frustration: Giving up is, you know, *giving up.*

I’m just in a really bad place right now, with no hope that it will get any better.

Just out of curiosity, do you get any money when people click on the ads, but don’t actually buy anything?

Yes. Many of the ads here are pay-per-impression, meaning that they just have to show up when the page loads into your browser for me to get a tiny sliver of a penny for that view. But even the ones that pay-per-click don’t require any other action but the click to pay. (That’s for the ads, of course. I don’t get anything from the Amazon links unless you actually buy something at Amazon.)

amanohyo

That does it, I am officially the stingiest person I know, but I hereby pledge $1 a month (less than four cents a day) to the site.

If just 1% of the regular readers are willing to follow my wimpy example (those who haven’t already given generously), we should cover around half of your rent.

Did you hear that other 99,999 readers? Not only did I pay my penny a month, I covered 99 of you other guys too! You should all be ashamed of yourselves. You’d rather buy one more Coke a month than read awesome reviews? That machine doesn’t even want your crumpled dollar bill. Why not enjoy the metallic tang of the drinking fountain today, and send that dollar via the magic of the internets to MA, who has given you so much? Act now, supplies are limited!

http://bluejaysway.wordpress.com/ Bluejay

I was going to suggest a dollar-a-month campaign, but amanohyo beat me to it.

MaryAnn, I know you have the donation cup out, but I wonder if you’ve considered doing something like an occasional week-long pledge drive, a la public radio, where maybe you have a highly-visible sticky post at the top of the page asking people to contribute, and giving detailed reasons why they should? Or where you set a target–say, an amount equivalent to the kind of salary you think is fair, or the amount needed to cover rent–and have some sort of thermometer graphic charting how much has been raised? (Sometimes people are convinced to give when they can see there’s a concrete, achievable goal.)

I know there’s a stigma about asking readers for donations, but there really shouldn’t be; public radio is really good at reminding its listeners why they value it and why they should put a dollar amount on it. It’s annoying for about a week, but it’s well-justified, and it succeeds in convincing a lot of folks to give, I think. Basically, it’s asking people to put a dollar value on, well, what they value.

I don’t know what you mean by “a significant percentage” of 100,000 viewers being regular, committed readers; but let’s say that number is 30%, and you convince them to chip in a dollar a month, or $12 a year–that’s $360,000 a year.

I’m sure it’s not that simple. Just a thought.

David Conner

BTW, I’m not surprised to find now that an article I came upon earlier from “eHow” is indeed a Demand Media production:

Helpfully, it lists “Franklin Mint Civil War Chess Set” under “Things You Need.”

It’s not simply a badly written article, but it’s completely useless content. Without DemandMedia, such a page would never be created or read, even among the sordid Internet underworld of Commemorative Chess Set Enthusiasts.

MaryAnn

I’ve actually been thinking, too, that a monthly “subscription” donation might be a good idea. According to one traffic tracker, 10 percent of visits to this site comes from “addicts,” and 25 percent come from regulars. That’s pretty big numbers. But even if only 5,000 readers (about a fifth of those regulars) could commit to donating just $1/£1 per month, even after PayPal takes its cut and I pay taxes on what’s left, that would be at least a modest income for NYC. It certainly would relieve the pressure and the stress that comes from worrying on a daily basis about money, which would leave me better able to focus on writing about movies and TV. (Even with that stress at the moment, I figure that committing to writing even more reviews, if I can squeeze the time out of the day, can’t hurt, to both bring in more traffic, maybe, but also to give more to the readers who are already coming around regularly.)

I know money is tight for everyone these days. But a dollar a month is even less painful than giving a chunk of dough upfront. (Which a bunch of readers have already done, for which I am very grateful.)

I’ll think on it and see about setting up a recurring-donations link to PayPal…

MaryAnn

It’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever come across: “How to Set Up a Franklin Mint Civil War Chess Set:”

Holy shit. I knew Demand Media content was bad, but I had no idea it was this bad.

e

I read an article on this a couple of weeks ago, or content mills in general. I’m surprised no one has brought up questions of safety. I know not every article is on a topic that could do some damage, but if someone is writing on such a topic, and they have no knowledge of it themselves, and no time to research, then theres a good chance things could go wrong.

I know, I know, common sense should prevail when people read things online, but if these articles are picked up by more trustworthy news outfits then they’re given an implicit recommendation, so why wouldn’t someone trust it. I can’t think of a great example, but lets say car maintenance, or mixing chemicals for home cleaners, or diagnosing/self medicating something. Dangerous possibilities, especially when content so quickly gets copied and pasted across the net in seconds.

Dokeo

I just came across this Slate article about Demand Media’s audience falling off a cliff in July – just in time for that big IPO. Maybe there’s some justice in the world?

When the online content company filed its initial public offering last Friday, Demand revealed that it is more than $6 million in the red so far this year. Last year, it posted a net loss of $22 million — which came on the heels of a $14 million loss in 2008 and a nearly $6 million loss in 2007.

Perhaps they followed the advice of one of their 20-minute articles on “How to Make Money on the Internet$”

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